KIRKUS REVIEW

The painting of a Newfoundland
lighthouse that Annie finds in her attic becomes a portal to the place itself
and the lonely girl who lives there.

Claire, 12, white, a serious student
and avid reader, lives with her mother, Maisie, a fiercely self-sufficient
painter, in an old lighthouse on the coast of Newfoundland. Claire longs to
move back to their home in St. John’s, where her younger sister died. Annie,
also 12, white, and a gifted artist, lives in Toronto with her accomplished
parents. The night her mother is injured in a car accident Annie finds herself
falling into the real world of the lighthouse, where Claire immediately
recognizes her as an older version of her sister, Annie. Claire blames herself
for young Annie’s death and believes that her mother does, too. Alternating
subchapters in Claire’s and Annie’s voices weave a cleverly constructed,
compellingly paced mystery that’s part time-slip story, part ghost story, part
meditation on the power of dreaming. Epigraphs drawn from Through the Looking Glass and
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland about the nature of dreams and reality
preface each of the nine chapters. As Annie begins to realize who she and
Claire might be to each other, Claire and Maisie clash over a series of
portraits imagining the young Annie growing older.

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